Guide RNA requirement for editing-site-specific endonucleolytic cleavage of preedited mRNA by mitochondrial ribonucleoprotein particles in Trypanosoma brucei.

RNA editing in trypanosome mitochondria entails the posttranscriptional internal addition and occasional deletion of uridines from precursor mRNAs. Ample evidence exists to show that the information specifying the site and number of uridines added or deleted comes from small, mitochondrially encoded guide RNAs (gRNAs). More recent work indicates that the process involves an enzymatic cascade, initiating with an endonucleolytic cleavage of the pre-mRNA at an editing site. The cleaved editing site can undergo uridine (U) addition to or deletion from the 3' end of the 5' fragment via a mitochondrial terminal uridylyl transferase (TUTase) or terminal uridylyl exonuclease, respectively. Mitochondrial RNA ligase subsequently rejoins the mRNA. Activities to carry out these processes have been found in trypanosome mitochondria, including an editing-site-specific endonuclease activity which cleaves preedited but not edited mRNAs. We have found that this enzymatic activity cosediments with the same 19S ribonucleoprotein particle previously shown to contain TUTase, RNA ligase, and gRNAs and remains stable after salt treatment. Depletion of endogenous cytochrome b gRNAs by the addition of complementary oligonucleotides in vitro completely inhibits editing-site cleavage of synthetic preedited cytochrome b mRNA. The addition of synthetic cognate gRNA for cytochrome b but not unrelated small RNA restores editing-site cleavage. These studies show that in addition to specifying the site and number of uridines added or deleted, gRNAs provide the necessary information for cleavage by the editing-site-specific endonuclease.